It’s not unfortunate that they were rescued, but it is very unfortunate that the soldiers did it without firing a shot. That leaves them and their fellow travelers free to labor under the misapprehensoin that “violence never solves anything.”

While the Christian Peacemakers Teams expressed joy at their colleagues’ rescue from captivity in Iraq, the group also called Thursday for an end to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

In reality, whether shots were fired or not, it was the threat that they might be which effected these people’s release. Add to the list of slavery, fascism, nazism, communism. and countless instances of royal tyranny, the kidnapping of these three peace activists as something that violence solved.